Let's Play the "Evolution = Nazism" Game

Ben Stein's Expelled is merely the latest in a long line of
creationist pieces that argue that, since Hitler appealed to evolution to
justify his ideas, therefore evolution bears much of the blame for Nazism and
the Holocaust. Evolutionists retort that it's always possible to misuse any
belief system, but that doesn't make the belief system itself wrong.

I think that's wussy.

First, it is fair to examine the role a belief system has in abuses
that arise from it. It's certainly fair to examine the role that Western
leftists played in making Stalin's and Mao's purges possible, or examine the
question whether Vietnam activists abetted the Khmer Rouge atrocities.

Second, it's noble to persuade your adversary with calm reason. But it's far
more satisfying to grab your adversary's best weapon and beat him to a bloody
pulp with it. D'Artagnan is cool and gets the dates, but I'll bet Hagar the Horrible's
fighting style is more fun
any day.

So, you wanna play "Who's responsible for Hitler?" Fine, let's play.

Where Did Hitler Get the Idea to Persecute the Jews?

I can understand, if not condone, Hitler's animosity to the Russians.
Communism was at one of its nadirs of barbarism, though we could argue endlessly
whether Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot was the most evil. And the fear of invasion from
the east is a primal one in Europe, fed by repeated invasions from the East.
Although it had been 700 years since the Mongol invasions, the Turkish Empire
was dead, and maybe it was time
to let it go.

But why the Jews? Walled up in ghettoes, barred from many occupations, what
threat were they to anybody? Yet somebody, for centuries, had been fanning
irrational hatred of the Jews. Somebody gave Hitler this idea. Who was it?

Nazi anti-Judaism was the work of godless, anti-Christian criminals. But
it would not have been possible without the almost two thousand years'
pre-history of 'Christian' anti-Judaism..
- Hans Kung

So Here's My Plan

One famous medieval diatribe against the Jews has an elaborate
plan for making their lives miserable:

First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover
with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone
or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of
Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians.
[All together now: ♫ "And
they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they'll kno-o-ow we
are Christians by our love." ♪]

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they
pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be
lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. [gypsies were among the
victims of the Holocaust, too] This will bring home to them the fact that
they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living
in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us
before God.

Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in
which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from
them.

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on
pain of loss of life and limb.

Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished
completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since
they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let them stay at
home....If you great lords and princes will not forbid such usurers the
highway legally, some day a troop may gather against them, having learned
from this booklet the true nature of the Jews and how one should deal with
them and not protect their activities. For you, too, must not and cannot
protect them unless you wish to become participants in an their abominations
in the sight of God. Consider carefully what good could come from this, and
prevent it. [Anyone who protects the Jews from violence is
sinning, and a little lynching might not be such a bad thing.]

Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and
treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for
safekeeping. The reason for such a measure is that, as said above, they have
no other means of earning a livelihood than usury
[whose fault was that?], and by it they have
stolen and robbed from us all they possess. [Predatory lending,
16th century style. Just the
other day I was walking down the street and somebody pointed a gun at me and
forced me to borrow money.]

Seventh, I recommend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff,
or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting
them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the
children of Adam (Gen. 3:19). For it is not fitting that they should let us
accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people,
idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of
all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means
of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their
pants.

What did the Jews do to deserve all this?

I have read and heard many stories about the Jews which agree with this
judgment of Christ, namely, how they have poisoned wells, made
assassinations, kidnapped children, as related before. I have heard that one
Jew sent another Jew, and this by means of a Christian, a pot of blood,
together with a barrel of wine, in which when drunk empty, a dead Jew was
found. There are many other similar stories. For their kidnapping of
children they have often been burned at the stake or banished (as we already
heard). I am well aware that they deny all of this. However, it all
coincides with the judgment of Christ which declares that they are venomous,
bitter, vindictive, tricky serpents, assassins, and children of the devil
who sting and work harm stealthily wherever they cannot do it openly.
[In
other words, the fact that they deny these crimes proves that they're
criminals]

But what about all those Christian commands to show mercy to others?

Nor dare we make ourselves partners in their devilish ranting and raving
by shielding and protecting them, by giving them food, drink, and shelter,
or by other neighborly acts...

Now let me commend these Jews sincerely to whoever feels the desire to
shelter and feed them, to honor them, to be fleeced, robbed, plundered,
defamed, vilified, and cursed by them, and to suffer every evil at their
hands -- these venomous serpents and devil's children, who are the most
vehement enemies of Christ our Lord and of us all. And if that is not
enough, let him stuff them into his mouth, or crawl into their behind and
worship this holy object. Then let him boast of his mercy, then let him
boast that he has strengthened the devil and his brood for further
blaspheming our dear Lord and the precious blood with which we Christians
are redeemed. Then he will be a perfect Christian, filled with works of
mercy for which Christ will reward him on the day of judgment, together with
the Jews in the eternal fire of hell!

Thank heaven for theologians who can discern the truth! If it weren't for
this explanation, I might read Matthew
25:35 ("For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you
gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in") and get a
completely different impression.

Anti-Semitism is the fruit of centuries of teaching by Popes and the
Catholic Church, like the above excerpts, by Pope Ooops, my bad. That's
not by a Pope or Catholic theologian. That was written by Martin Luther;
it's
a thoroughly evil little pamphlet from 1543 titled On the Jews and Their Lies.
This is the guy that Halley's Bible Handbook calls "Next to Jesus and
Paul, the Greatest Man of all the ages." A bit further along, we read
"Persecution is the spirit of the DEVIL, even though carried on in the name of
Christ." Apparently Halley never read Luther's writings. (You can find
Luther's diatribe
quoted in William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and many
other places. You will probably not find it in a lot of "Christian"
collections of Luther's works.)

Gotta love point 3, about taking all the books away. This from a guy who
complained that the Catholic Church had taken the Bible away from the people.

The irony is that Luther, early in his career, condemned abuses of the Jews.
He seems to have hoped that they would respond to his kinder, gentler
Christianity. But when they didn't, he turned on them.

This is not to defend the Catholic Church, which has its own long list of
anti-Semitic sins, but to demolish entirely the pretense that Things Would Have
Been Different if Real Christians had been in charge.

There's more. Encouraged partly by Luther's break with Rome, the peasants of
Germany revolted in 1525. In his letter An Admonition to Peace, Luther
condemned the avarice of the nobility but had scant sympathy for the peasants.
To them he wrote:

Again, it is not true when you declare that you teach and live according
to the Gospel. There is not one of the articles which teaches a single point
of the Gospel, but everything is directed to one purpose; namely, that your
bodies and your properties may be free. In a word, they all deal with
worldly and temporal matters. You would have power and wealth, so as not to
suffer wrong; and yet the Gospel does not take worldly matters into account,
and makes the external life consist only in suffering, wrong, cross,
patience, and contempt for temporal wealth and life.
[Bad peasants. Revolting merely because of oppression.]

ON THE THIRD ARTICLE [the peasants had drafted a
manifesto with twelve articles] “There shall be no serfs, for Christ
has made all men free.” That is making Christian liberty an utterly carnal
thing. Did not Abraham and other patriarchs and prophets have slaves? Read
what St. Paul teaches about servants, who, at that time, were all slaves.
Therefore this article is dead against the Gospel. It is a piece of robbery
by which every man takes from his lord the body, which has become his lord’s
property. For a slave can be a Christian, and have Christian liberty, in the
same way that a prisoner or a sick man is a Christian, and yet not free.
This article would make all men equal, and turn the spiritual kingdom of
Christ into a worldly, external kingdom; and that is impossible. For a
worldly kingdom cannot stand unless there is in it an inequality of persons,
so that some are free, some imprisoned, some lords, some subjects, etc.; and
St. Paul says in Galatians 3:28, that in Christ master and servant are one
thing. [Considering how often anti-evolutionists
equate evolution with subversion, it's worth asking whether anyone who
respects Luther, a man who hated freedom so vehemently, can call himself an American
patriot. Imagine, all men equal! O the horror! At the very least, the irony
of Martin Luther King being named after this man is overpowering. All the
more so when we recall the whiff of lynch law in Point 5 above.]

Then compare these two passages:

The rulers unjustly take your property; that is the one side. On the
other hand, you take from them the authority, in which their whole property
and life and being consist. [Because life loses all its
meaning if you can't boss people around.]

I must also give you an illustration from this present time. Pope and
emperor have set themselves against me and have raged. Now how have I
brought it about that the more pope and emperor have raged the more my
Gospel spread? I have never drawn sword nor desired revenge. I have begun no
division and no rebellion, but, so far as I was able, I have helped the
worldly rulers, even those who persecuted the Gospel and me, to maintain
their power and honor.

"I have begun no division and no rebellion." The mind just boggles. Within a
short time, it was no more Mister Nice Guy. The pamphlet Against the Robbing
and Murdering Hordes of Peasants really doesn't need much elaboration:

Stab, smite, slay, whoever can.

Luther was between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, many nobles
blamed him for the Peasant Revolt (at least partly true) and other people
condemned him for betraying the peasants in his later writings (also partly
true). It was a no-win situation. But just as with the Jews, when his initial
conciliatory approach failed, Luther turned vindictive.

Luther was an absolutely classic authoritarian, someone who felt justified in
opposing any authority that impeded him but who could simultaneously demand that
everyone else submit to authority. There's more than a passing similarity to
Hitler, who lashed out at the intellectuals who spurned him by instituting a
cult of authority. If Darwin bears some moral culpability for the Holocaust,
where does that leave Luther and the people who have treated him as a hero?

Everything Hitler Said About Evolution

Mein Kampf is available on line. The version I used is the James
Murphy translation (1939). It's easy to download it and then do a word count.
The results are interesting:

"Darwin" never occurs. Not once.

"Evolution" occurs twelve times in the English translation. Out of roughly a quarter million words.
The German word used, "Entwicklung," occurs many more times, usually
translated as "development."

"Christian" occurs 32 times. To be fair, most are references to the
Christian Democratic Party.

"Revolution" occurs 117 times, almost ten times as often as "evolution."

I can really see why people don't check this stuff out. It's so hard.
It took me fully two minutes to find a link to an on-line version of Mein
Kampf (courtesy of the Australian Gutenburg Project), at least a minute to
download it, and two minutes more to do the word searches. Why, that's five
whole minutes. As Hobbes once said to Calvin, "Why waste time learning when
ignorance is instantaneous?"

I have to salute Murphy. This is turgid stuff even in English. Making sense
of it in German must have been no picnic. It's worse than even most of the
comments on political blogs, if you can imagine such a thing.

Chapter X
(Volume I): Why the Second Reich Collapsed

In the political field also observant eyes might have noticed certain
anomalies of the REICH which foretold disaster unless some alteration and
correction took place in time. The lack of orientation in German policy,
both domestic and foreign, was obvious to everyone who was not purposely
blind. The best thing that could be said about the practice of making
compromises is that it seemed outwardly to be in harmony with Bismarck's
axiom that 'politics is the art of the possible'. But Bismarck was a
slightly different man from the Chancellors who followed him. This
difference allowed the former to apply that formula to the very essence of
his policy, while in the mouths of the others it took on an utterly
different significance. When he uttered that phrase Bismarck meant to say
that in order to attain a definite political end all possible means should
be employed or at least that all possibilities should be tried. But his
successors see in that phrase only a solemn declaration that one is not
necessarily bound to have political principles or any definite political
aims at all. And the political leaders of the REICH at that time had no
far-seeing policy. Here, again, the necessary foundation was lacking,
namely, a definite WELTANSCHAUUNG, and these leaders also lacked that clear
insight into the laws of political evolution which is a necessary quality in
political leadership.

Chapter XI: Race And People

Such a dispensation of Nature is quite logical. Every crossing between
two breeds which are not quite equal results in a product which holds an
intermediate place between the levels of the two parents. This means that
the offspring will indeed be superior to the parent which stands in the
biologically lower order of being, but not so high as the higher parent. For
this reason it must eventually succumb in any struggle against the higher
species. Such mating contradicts the will of Nature towards the selective
improvements of life in general. The favourable preliminary to this
improvement is not to mate individuals of higher and lower orders of being
but rather to allow the complete triumph of the higher order. The stronger
must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the
sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon
this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a
feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the
process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not
be conceivable at all. [This is the only use even remotely related to
biological evolution.]

Only after subjugated races were employed as slaves was a similar fate
allotted to animals, and not vice versa, as some people would have us
believe. At first it was the conquered enemy who had to draw the plough and
only afterwards did the ox and horse take his place. Nobody else but puling
pacifists can consider this fact as a sign of human degradation. Such people
fail to recognize that this evolution had to take place in order that man
might reach that degree of civilization which these apostles now exploit in
an attempt to make the world pay attention to their rigmarole.

Unconsciously his instinct will submit to the knowledge that the
preservation of the species, even at the cost of the individual life, is a
primal necessity and he will protest against the fantasies of pacifist
ranters, who in reality are nothing better than cowardly egoists, even
though camouflaged, who contradict the laws of human development. For it is
a necessity of human evolution that the individual should be imbued with the
spirit of sacrifice in favour of the common weal, and that he should not be
influenced by the morbid notions of those knaves who pretend to know better
than Nature and who have the impudence to criticize her decrees.

The intellectual faculties of the Jew have been trained through thousands
of years. To-day the Jew is looked upon as specially 'cunning'; and in a
certain sense he has been so throughout the ages. His intellectual powers,
however, are not the result of an inner evolution but rather have been
shaped by the object-lessons which the Jew has received from others. The
human spirit cannot climb upwards without taking successive steps. For every
step upwards it needs the foundation of what has been constructed
before--the past--which in, the comprehensive sense here employed, can have
been laid only in a general civilization. All thinking originates only to a
very small degree in personal experience. The largest part is based on the
accumulated experiences of the past. The general level of civilization
provides the individual, who in most cases is not consciously aware of the
fact, with such an abundance of preliminary knowledge that with this
equipment he can more easily take further steps on the road of progress. The
boy of to-day, for example, grows up among such an overwhelming mass of
technical achievement which has accumulated during the last century that he
takes as granted many things which a hundred years ago were still mysteries
even to the greatest minds of those times. Yet these things that are not so
much a matter of course are of enormous importance to those who would
understand the progress we have made in these matters and would carry on
that progress a step farther. If a man of genius belonging to the 'twenties
of the last century were to arise from his grave to-day he would find it
more difficult to understand our present age than the contemporary boy of
fifteen years of age who may even have only an average intelligence. The man
of genius, thus come back from the past, would need to provide himself with
an extraordinary amount of preliminary information which our contemporary
youth receive automatically, so to speak, during the time they are growing
up among the products of our modern civilization.

Chapter IV (Volume
II) Personality And The Ideal Of The People's State

In order to elucidate this point of view it may be worth while to glance
once again at the real origins and causes of the cultural
evolution of
mankind.

In our case this term has no meaning. Because everyone who believes in
the higher evolution of living organisms must admit that every manifestation
of the vital urge and struggle to live must have had a definite beginning in
time and that one subject alone must have manifested it for the first time.
It was then repeated again and again; and the practice of it spread over a
widening area, until finally it passed into the subconscience of every
member of the species, where it manifested itself as 'instinct.'

Chapter VII The Conflict With
The Red Forces

No. The general evolution of things, even though it took a century of
struggle, placed the best in the position that it had merited.

The sovereign rights which the individual states renounced in order to
form the REICH were voluntarily ceded only to a very small degree. For the
most part they had no practical existence or they were simply taken by
Prussia under the pressure of her preponderant power. The principle followed
by Bismarck was not to give the REICH what he could take from the individual
states but to demand from the individual states only what was absolutely
necessary for the REICH. A moderate and wise policy. On the one side
Bismarck showed the greatest regard for customs and traditions; on the other
side his policy secured for the new REICH from its foundation onwards a
great measure of love and willing co-operation. But it would be a
fundamental error to attribute Bismarck's decision to any conviction on his
part that the REICH was thus acquiring all the rights of sovereignty which
would suflice for all time. That was far from Bismarck's idea. On the
contrary, he wished to leave over for the future what it would be difficult
to carry through at the moment and might not have been readily agreed to by
the individual states. He trusted to the levelling effect of time and to the
pressure exercised by the process of evolution, the steady action of which
appeared more effective than an attempt to break the resistance which the
individual states offered at the moment. By this policy he showed his great
ability in the art of statesmanship. And, as a matter of fact, the
sovereignty of the REICH has continually increased at the cost of the
sovereignty of the individual states. The passing of time has achieved what
Bismarck hoped it would.

Chapter XI
Propaganda And Organization

The year 1921 was specially important for me from many points of view.
When I entered the German Labour Party I at once took charge of the
propaganda, believing this branch to be far the most important for the time
being. Just then it was not a matter of pressing necessity to cudgel one's
brains over problems of organization. The first necessity was to spread our
ideas among as many people as possible. Propaganda should go well ahead of
organization and gather together the human material for the latter to work
up. I have never been in favour of hasty and pedantic methods of
organization, because in most cases the result is merely a piece of dead
mechanism and only rarely a living organization. Organization is a thing
that derives its existence from organic life, organic evolution. When the
same set of ideas have found a lodgement in the minds of a certain number of
people they tend of themselves to form a certain degree of order among those
people and out of this inner formation something that is very valuable
arises. Of course here, as everywhere else, one must take account of those
human weaknesses which make men hesitate, especially at the beginning, to
submit to the control of a superior mind. If an organization is imposed from
above downwards in a mechanical fashion, there is always the danger that
some individual may push himself forward who is not known for what he is and
who, out of jealousy, will try to hinder abler persons from taking a leading
place in the movement. The damage that results from that kind of thing may
have fatal consequences, especially in a new movement.

The National Socialist Movement, which aims at establishing the National
Socialist People's State, must always bear steadfastly in mind the principle
that every future institution under that State must be rooted in the
movement itself. It is a great mistake to believe that by acquiring
possession of supreme political power we can bring about a definite
reorganization, suddenly starting from nothing, without the help of a
certain reserve stock of men who have been trained beforehand, especially in
the spirit of the movement. Here also the principle holds good that the
spirit is always more important than the external form which it animates;
since this form can be created mechanically and quickly. For instance, the
leadership principle may be imposed on an organized political community in a
dictatorial way. But this principle can become a living reality only by
passing through the stages that are necessary for its own
evolution. These
stages lead from the smallest cell of the State organism upwards. As its
bearers and representatives, the leadership principle must have a body of
men who have passed through a process of selection lasting over several
years, who have been tempered by the hard realities of life and thus
rendered capable of carrying the principle into practical effect.

Chapter XIII The
German Post-War Policy Of Alliances

This evolution has not yet taken the shape of a conscious intention and
movement to restore the political power and independence of our nation; but
the blame for this must be attributed to those utterly incompetent people
who have no natural endowments to qualify them for statesmanship and yet
have been governing our nation since 1918 and leading it to ruin.

These quotes make it obvious that Hitler never used evolution in a rigorous
biological sense. By far most of the usages use evolution as synonymous
with "development" or "historical forces." Not a single usage is remotely
scientific and not a single one uses evolution to argue that Germany should
adopt some policy or take some course of action. Hitler's usages are almost
those of a vitalist - he seems to think evolution is driven from within by
"spirit of sacrifice in favour of the common weal" or "the vital urge and
struggle to live." In fact, since the word "Entwicklung" occurs far more
than twelve times and is mostly translated as "development," one has to wonder
if Hitler was even aware of Darwin's ideas at all.

Where Are the Jews Now?

The ones who died in the Holocaust, I mean?

"I don't know?" Oh, come, come, come. Don't be so modest. One of the
principal things a religion tries to answer is the question of what happens when
we die. And your religion doesn't know? Shame on you.

Or maybe you're saying it is possible to go to heaven without being a
Christian. I don't have a problem, personally, but then I don't go around
spouting creationist babble about links between evolution and Nazism.

No, anyone who believes evolution was a root of Nazism knows perfectly well
what the answer to this question has to be. The Jews are in hell, because
they didn'tacceptJesusastheirpersonalLordandSavior.

O-kay. So evolution is evil because it led to the Holocaust. You
follow a god who condemns people to hell after they've been through
Auschwitz. So if evolution is evil, where does your belief system fall?

Now I can picture one possible response to this argument. And I really,
really, really hope somebody makes it.

So You Think I'm Exaggerating?

From Australia, one of the few places where extreme fundamentalists can be
even more evil than their American counterparts, an article in the Sydney
Morning Herald, November 19, 2008:

A Baptist pastor has
admitted telling Jewish leaders that Jews were "going to hell" and faced a
fate "worse than the Holocaust" because they had not accepted Jesus as their
saviour.

Australia, even counting Ken Ham and the crackpot government of Queensland,
is nowhere near the bottom of the barrel. There's far worse than this. From the
British Observer, December 9, 2007:

The rainy season is over and the Niger Delta is lush and humid. This
southern edge of West Africa, where Nigeria's wealth pumps out of oil and
gas fields to bypass millions of its poorest people, is a restless place. In
the small delta state of Akwa Ibom, the tension and the poverty has
delivered an opportunity for a new and terrible phenomenon that is leading
to the abuse and the murder of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children. And
it is being done in the name of Christianity.

Almost everyone goes to church here. Driving through the town of Esit
Eket, the rust-streaked signs, tarpaulins hung between trees and posters on
boulders, advertise a church for every third or fourth house along the road.
Such names as New Testament Assembly, Church of God Mission, Mount Zion
Gospel, Glory of God, Brotherhood of the Cross, Redeemed, Apostalistic.
Behind the smartly painted doors pastors make a living by 'deliverances' -
exorcisms - for people beset by witchcraft, something seen to cause anything
from divorce, disease, accidents or job losses. With so many churches it's a
competitive market, but by local standards a lucrative one.

But an exploitative situation has now grown into something much more
sinister as preachers are turning their attentions to children - naming them
as witches. In a maddened state of terror, parents and whole villages turn
on the child. They are burnt, poisoned, slashed, chained to trees, buried
alive or simply beaten and chased off into the bush.

Some parents scrape together sums needed to pay for a deliverance -
sometimes as much as three or four months' salary for the average working
man - although the pastor will explain that the witch might return and a
second deliverance will be needed. Even if the parent wants to keep the
child, their neighbours may attack it in the street.

If evolution leads to the Holocaust, how shall we judge Christianity?
Remember,

I am perfectly well aware of the complexities of Luther. He did launch the
Protestant Reformation, although so many other people broke with Rome at that
time that it seems inevitable that someone would get away with it. And
almost single handedly, he standardized German with his translation of the
Bible. But he was a deeply flawed, contradictory and conflicted person.
And under the veneer of spirituality, once you start reading his works, was a
very vile, spiteful, and hate-filled person. Most historians draw a pretty
straight line from Luther's anti-Semitism to Hitler's.